


The Return of Sherlock Holmes

by wordybirdy



Series: Trifle Bubbles - One-Shots & Multi-Chaptered [7]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Love, M/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:49:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordybirdy/pseuds/wordybirdy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes and Watson discover that the fifteen days they must spend apart are the very devil.  Their reunion is concupiscent.</p><p>A Trifle bubble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return of Sherlock Holmes

MY DEAR J THE CASE IS FINALLY CONCLUDED STOP SANITY BARELY INTACT STOP ANTICIPATE RETURN ON MONDAY EVENING STOP PREPARE YOURSELF STOP EVER YOURS SH

I read Holmes's telegram over for the twentieth time that morning. I folded it and replaced it with the others on the table: an encoded hillock of _'I miss you's_ between the formal lined reports. Fifteen telegrams in all, one for each day spent apart. The hours, drawn slow as molasses; the days occupied as best I might but the nights close and intolerable. Not due solely to my pining, but to my anxiety, for the case – on behalf of the Spanish Embassy – was an exceedingly delicate affair and one fraught with risk. I treasured every missive, then, as proof of my friend's well-being. It had been my great wish to accompany him. The Embassy refused it, as did Holmes himself. It was too dangerous, he said; too this, too that. No amount of soft persuasion or quiet brooding upon my part could sway his resolve. Holmes set out upon his travels as one man, leaving behind a dozen promises, eleven of which I quite expected him to break.

We had seldom been apart in all the years of our acquaintance. A few days, at most, at worst. It was understood by clients – at the behest of Sherlock Holmes – that our professional partnership was inviolate: _“This is my friend, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself.”_ We did not feel smothered by the other, indeed, it was always quite the opposite. And although of course we were not forever in each other's laps, simply knowing that the other was in the same building, if not the room, was good enough.

I had missed Holmes terribly, therefore, these fifteen days.

How to spend the intervening drift? The 'molasses maw of craving', this final day?

I ate a large breakfast. I read _The Times_ from first to last sheet. I smoked two pipes. It was only ten-thirty. I ventured out for a walk. I paid a visit to Barnes the bookseller, and held the dear fellow in conversation for quite twenty minutes. I returned home and read the first chapter of my clothbound new purchase. I ate a small lunch. 

By three o'clock I could bear it no longer. I drew some hot water for a bath, lay amidst the ripple and the steam, and dreamed of the evening yet to come. Already I found myself listening for the key turned in the lock and the step upon the stair. 

Refreshed and dressed, I resumed my sentry in the sitting-room. The street outside, all bustle still; the city in blissful incognisance. I was prepared, as my friend had bid me be. I ignored my tumescence.

Mrs. Hudson flitted in to set the table for our dinner.

“Are we expecting Mr. Holmes?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye. “Oh, Doctor, you have missed him, I can tell.”

Alarmed at first – for I wildly imagined that the dear lady had observed my tenting – I composed myself, as she continued with her crockery and cutlery and with paying me no mind.

“Is it so very obvious?” I enquired.

(And this of the fact of my missing the man, and certainly _not_ of the other.)

She turned around, a wise smile upon her face.

“Oh yes,” said she. “You have been all at sea, these past fourteen days.”

“ _Fifteen_ days,” I said in a most plaintive tone.

“Well, see now,” she said, laughing, “and there is the proof of it.”

I held up my hands in admission. 

“We are expecting him back, but I am uncertain of the time,” I said. “Perhaps it would be best if you could prepare something that might be kept warm in the oven and not be spoiled.”

“I shall be happy to, Dr. Watson, and I do hope that Mr. Holmes has a safe journey home.”

Our landlady bustled from the sitting-room.

I flung myself prone upon the sofa, one arm outstretched to come into contact, quite unintentionally, with the violin case upon the rug. My fingers quested with the catch, lifted the lid and touched the precious wood within. I plick-plucked idly at a string. It sang sadly for its master, for fifteen days bereft of raptus. 

_John..._

I stirred. That in-between discord of sleep and awake: dreamless, constricted.

_John..._

My collar wrung tight around my neck. I swallowed shortly. My right arm, hung over the cushions to the floor, as a dead weight. My eyelids flickered open.

Holmes's face, intent and frowning, fell into focus.

“You're awake,” he said, softly. 

“Holmes!”

I struggled up into the vertical.

“I have been prodding you for three minutes,” he complained.

“Have you, really?” I blinked, still grogged. “I'm sorry. I must have been in a deep sleep.” I rubbed vigorously at my prickling arm to encourage the circulation. “Ouch.”

He winked. 

“This is not the 'welcome home' that I was intending,” I said. “Let us start over.” 

He had been kneeling on the rug beside me, close but not yet close enough. With one spring (for I was now quite wide awake), I had him on his back. He laughed out loud from the surprise of it. I grabbed his wrists, pinioned them high above his head. I inhaled, to draw the scent of him down deep into my lungs. I sought his lips and kissed the breath fair out of him.

“You have absolutely no idea,” I said.

Holmes quirked an eyebrow at me.

“As to how much I have missed you,” I added.

“I do have an inkling,” said he. “A sizeable part of you is jabbing at my midriff.”

“I am ruining your suit, with us like this.”

“I don't care.”

His lips were sweet, delicious. _He has just eaten a plum_ , I thought. Our tongues did battle, thrust and parried.

“Did the case go well?” I asked (more out of duty than from interest, for I was much preoccupied).

“Oh, damn the case,” said he, freeing both hands and levering up onto his elbows. “Take me to bed.”

It was seven thirty in the evening. Too early yet for shadows, but I drew our bedroom curtains all the same and locked the door. Holmes was unbuttoning his waistcoat. I chivvied his fingers and took over the task, drawing the soft silk away and cast out to one side. I released the buttons of his shirt – Mother of pearl – and caressed the skin I found beneath.

“You are bruised,” I said quietly. Mottled patches, blue and yellow, and elsewhere, a vibrant purple black. I touched them tenderly.

“They are nothing,” said my friend. “I gave a great deal worse than I received.”

“What else?”

He shrugged.

I kissed his stomach, mouthed the dark hair trail leading to his waistline. I unfastened his trousers, pulled them down, narrow-hipped, to slender ankles. He stepped out and kicked them clear. Now worshipful, and kneeling on an eye-line with his prick, I removed his cotton underwear. 

“Your hip, too.”

“Yes.” 

His hand, ruffling through my hair to draw me the closer to his cockstand.

“It is so good to see the Eiffel Tower again,” I murmured, taking it – as I had oft fantasised these weeks – upon my tongue. I revelled in the gasping moan, the thrust, his hands tangling in my hair. His fingers twisted, pulled: a taut staccato seeking rhythm.

For myself, I was still dressed, of course. My own member bucked and railed at its restriction. So now, to best continue to explore, the heat of cleft, soft buttock swell, or to mind to my own comfort? Half a dozen things I wished to try, not least of which to bring my friend to glory in my mouth. 

Of this last, he had his own ideas.

“John, not yet.” Exhaling, panting. “Wait. My god, wait.” 

I released him, but followed it, craning, as he proceeded to draw away. He observed this and smiled.

“Like a babe to its bottle,” I said, breathless and laughing.

“Get out of those clothes,” said he, now adopting the most lordly manner. “And come to the bed.”

He arranged himself upon it, on his back, his legs apart enough to tease as I wrestled my own garments, gazing down.

“Did you miss me?” I demanded.

He thrust out his tongue. “Not even remotely.”

“Liar.”

His face softened. “You know that I did,” he whispered. “Why do you even have to ask?”

“Oh, just to hear what you might say.”

I bounced onto the bed at last. His eyes roved over me approvingly.

“Those _bruises_ ,” I said, leaning forward to touch gently again. “I am setting about them with the witch hazel as soon as we're through.”

Holmes rolled his eyes. He reached out to squeeze and stroke at my inner thigh.

“I want to make you happy,” he said. “Tell me what you would like.”

“Well, I was _more_ than happy with your prick in my mouth just a minute ago, but then you--”

He swiped at my arm, breaking my balance to send me sprawling out beside him. We tangled, then: a knot of limbs and tongues and grazing teeth, whimpering and groaning. And at last, with a hard, spongy fistful of him, and he with his face in my hair and one leg slung around me as a fisherman's hook, we decided on our pleasure. And we were not slow about it, and we did not take our time. I impaled him at an angle that called for mathematical equation. And he, drawing a swallow on my neck, the flesh turned purple, was quite loud enough in glory to rouse the recently deceased.

We clung to each other through softening, sharing kisses, fond endearments. Somehow, we had thrown our bedsheets and both pillows to the floor during the tussle.

I fetched a damp cloth from the basin and we set to cleaning up.

“That was most athletic,” I said, gazing around me at the carnage.

My friend, leaning back against the headboard, smiled serenely. He lit a cigarette.

“And I feel quite sane again,” said he. He yawned. “You provide the most excellent medicine, John.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“...and so I kept it in the oven for as long as I was able, Dr. Watson. But I am afraid to say it spoiled, for there is only just so long a good meal can withstand such treatment...”

“I am _extremely_ sorry, Mrs. Hudson--”

“...and so I ended up feeding it to Mrs. Turner's little terrier. At least _he_ appreciated it...”

“I _do_ apologise--”

“...and my goodness, Doctor, I thought that one of you was being murdered! I heard such a frightening noise...”

I adjusted my collar, glanced out of the sitting-room window to Baker Street, the morning blue sky and beyond.

“Ah, well, yes, Mrs. Hudson. I do regret that we disturbed you. I was, er, treating Mr. Holmes's bruises with the witch hazel, and, well, you know how he complains so...”

“Oh, I _do_ ,” said our landlady, with a sympathetic pat to my arm. “Oh, yes, I most certainly do, Dr. Watson.”

**Author's Note:**

> A celebrative ditty from the great Tom Lehrer:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pva35TFiBfI
> 
> Enjoy!


End file.
